


Hurting Me By Hurting You

by nirame



Category: Supernatural
Genre: "happy" end (no one dies), BAMF!Cas, BAMF!Dean, BAMF!Sam, Cas Whump, Choking, Demonic Possession, Gen, Hurt!Cas, Hurt!Sam, Manipulation, Season 9, Swearing, Team Free Will, Whump, fallen!cas, human!Cas, hurt 'n yet no comfort, hurt!Dean, light psychologic torture, possessed!dean, preslash, semi explicit descriptions of violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-09-30
Updated: 2014-04-19
Packaged: 2017-12-27 23:30:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,416
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/984937
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nirame/pseuds/nirame
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Dean found Cas and took him 'home', he decides to take him along on an easy hunt, hoping the work’d distract  the fallen angel somewhat from his newly human existence.<br/>Sam stays back at the bunker and tries to recover from the effects of the unfinished trials.</p><p>It's just bad luck that Dean gets possessed on the first evening of his and Cas' hunting trip.</p><p>(hiatus work, started writing past season 8, pre season 9)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Bow To Me

**Author's Note:**

  * For [yourguardianangel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/yourguardianangel/gifts).



> !!DISCLAIMER:!!
> 
> I don’t own any of the characters, they are not my intellectual property. There is no financial gain made from this nor will any be sought. This is for entertainment purposes only.   
> The story as itself is my intellectual property, do not copy, cite, or distribute without permission.

He could feel his muscles flexing and his sinews working, moving his own arm against his will.

He could feel the delicate skin of Cas’ throat against his palm as he took a firm hold of his neck, his nerve endings sending every bit of tactile information on to his mind. He felt the warmth of fear-heated skin on his fingertips, Cas’ pulsepoint, the edge of his stubble and the increasing pressure of his hand as he steadily pinned him, ever harder, to the motel wall behind.

He saw everything out of his own eyes, firmly fixed on the former angel, even though he wanted nothing more desperately than shut them tightly and run.

It wasn’t simply like being caged inside his head. He wasn’t seeing and witnessing everything from deep down or from behind some kind of hazy fog. It was **him** doing all this with his own hands and still having no control at all over his actions, like a muscle cramp or a nervous twitch.  
He felt his lips moving, his vocal chords vibrating and his tongue forming the words as he spoke and he felt Cas’ soft, chapped lips, tightly pressed against the skin of his own palm, mouthing Dean’s name under his strong grip on Castiel’s jaw.  
He saw and felt his own fingertips turning white with pressure as they dug tightly into the easily giving skin and the tensed muscles of Cas’ jawbone underneath his touch. 

The feeling wasn’t exactly new to him. He’d been possessed now for almost two weeks.

After he found Cas - human and broke - and brought him ‘home’, Dean had decided to take him along on an easy hunt, hoping the work’d distract him somewhat from his new state of being.  
Sammy stayed put, trying to recover as much as possible from the still-raw ordeal.

Just one careless little moment, distracted by god-only-knows-what unimportant thing, brought him here.  
One goddamn demon overpowering him, ripping off a shred of the tattooed skin on his chest and black smoke pouring and clawing down his throat.   
Getting to feel it was something completely different to just seeing it, a whole new level of fucked up.

He fought, hell he did. He tried moving his limbs with all the intent one could bring up, tried to force his muscles to move the way he wanted to. He tried casting it out of his body and mind with angry, poisonous thoughts, tried reciting an exorcism through thoughts. 

But all that happened was the demon roamed through his memories almost freely, adapting and imitating his behavior better than he ever thought one could.  
He could feel it searching his mind for everything usable, not giving away a thing of itself, but he couldn’t figure out why. Why hadn’t it just killed him? 

It was the first day away from Sammy, only a week after he found Cas.  
When he got back to the motel room that Castiel and him were staying in, when he heard and felt the words coming out of his mouth he was enraged, but it didn’t help anything. Didn’t stop them from tumbling from his lips. 

“You know, I didn’t mention anything in Sam’s presence, but you‘re gonna listen to me closely now, Cas.” 

It was bizarre, his voice strained and cold and he knew his expression must have looked both pained and pissed at once. 

Concern and trepidation were written over Castiel’s face as he stopped the research he was doing, rising from the table he was sitting at and approaching him with a questioning “Dean?”.  
Dean felt his throat clenching tight around the words. 

“I thought about this for a long time now, ya know? I got a little problem here, Cas.”  
Cas’ expression changed into a mixture of puzzlement and plain eagerness. He looked like he’d try to put down the stars for Dean if it’d solve any of his problems.  
Maybe some time ago he even would have.  
“What is it?”

Dean could sense the demons intentions, everything it was about to say just a split second ahead and he fought even more.  
“No matter what I tell you to do or not do, you always fuck things up. That’s a fact, and you know it.”  
Dean never realized how very cold and cruel his voice could sound. He recognized a small hint of hurt in Cas’ eyes just before they flicked a few times quickly to his left and his right.

“Dean, I tried to...”  
The demons words cut him off harshly, his voice raising and sounding more angered than before. His face twisted into an ugly sneer as he spat, “Yeah, I know, you just tried to do the right thing. You’re preaching to the goddamn choir, here, Cas!”

He stepped a bit closer til there was not even a forearms length between them. It was very subtle, almost impalpable, but Cas seemed to shrink just a little, his eyes flicking back and forth between Dean’s probably green ones in confusion.  
Dean noticed it anyway - so did the demon.

“But tell me,” he went on in a whisper, the words sounding even more malicious and intimidating in the sudden quiet, “did it work what you did? Just one - single - time?” 

Silence.

“Yeah, I thought so”, he felt himself muttering. Cas’ expression was unchanged, his lips just slightly parted, eyes fixed on Dean's.

“The thing is, I can’t go on like that. With you always doing the same mistakes over and over again. And I just don’t know how to teach you this in a way that you’ll actually learn.”  
He so didn’t like where this was going. 

The worst thing about it was, that in some kind of bizarro world - in just a little bit more twisted version of reality, with him being just a little bit more hopeless and bitter - this could be something actually happening. And he hated the little hints of truth in every sentence.

He had long since forgiven Cas, the anger faded to a pale bruise, and he had finally started doing the right thing by himself again. But of course for Cas it sounded a lot like a Dean he was painfully familiar with, hurt and giving up hope after the last time Cas went off on his own against Dean’s better judgement and fucked up everything.

“So what am I supposed to do with you, now, huh?”

At first he thought Cas would notice at some point, or at least stop buying all the bullshit coming out of his mouth. But it went on for a bit, with silly but too rationally phrased arguments like “You gotta learn to listen to me or we’ll have this over and over again” or “You just won’t ever get it into your head otherwise” slowly fading Cas’ resistance and protest into resignation.

“You gotta feel it, Cas”, Dean said before his fist collided violently with Cas jaw and knocked him off his feet.  
He listened to the little pained, startled gasps, watched as Cas tried to collect himself again and touched his chin with a light groan, spitting a bit blood onto the carpeted floor that painted his lips red.  
He felt Cas‘ hair taut under his fingers when he grabbed his head and pulled, encouraging the man to follow him, crawling as fast as he could to take a little pressure off of his scalp, strained noises of pain escaping him.

Dean could sense the demon deciding between headboard and radiator.  
It chose the latter, fixing Cas’ wrists with a rope out of Dean’s duffle tight to the high end of it, the ribs of the heater probably digging into his back painfully and the height too high to sit properly and too low to stand.

Dean tried to scream when Cas looked up into his eyes, his expression pained and hurt and anxious, but still looking so trusting that it made him feel nauseous.

And there it was again, that light, calm “Dean” out of Cas mouth. Nothing more.

“You know I do this for you Cas.”  
Dean felt the sympathetic expression on his own face, a perfect lie, a flawless imitation.

“You gotta trust me, Cas, at least this one time", he went on.  
"You **do** trust me, do you?”  
Dean could hear and feel the threat in the words and Cas’ looked slightly more frightened, his breath taking it up a notch and his eyes started flicking nervously from one place to another as he was obviously deciding what to say. He seemed to try so hard to trust Dean, but couldn’t get rid of the doubt he certainly felt.

The demon didn’t wait that long and Dean kicked Cas in the stomach right after he gave another hard punch to his jaw. He watched him writhing and coughing, his legs flexing in pain and his fingers moving helplessly in his restraints. 

“Do you trust me, Cas?!”, he repeated impatiently.

The answer came immediately, sounded trained and hopeless, quickly screwed out between pained moans, “Yes, Dean. I trust you.”

“Good.”

He told him that he needed to feel the pain; that it was important for the learning process and that it was a good thing. He declared to him he should think about all the things he did, should recap them all vividly to connect this failures - and his disobedience and mistrust towards Dean that caused them - with the punishment. That this was Dean doing him a favor.

Dean struggled mentally to the point of exhaustion, tried to stop his fists as they came down on Cas repeatedly and he felt the flesh give under his knuckles.

When he was done, the demon seemingly satisfied, Cas was nothing but a squirming, bloody mess, whimpering and moaning, his weight making the restraints dig tight into his rubbed raw wrists.

Two hours later, when the demon untied him, he must have been either asleep or passed out.

To Dean‘s surprise, the demon just kept going on with the usual routine of researching and hunting. At least he pretended to, making false assumptions and apparently keeping Cas - who was bruised all over and failed miserably trying to act and react normally - busy. He even sent him to do laundry.

Dean told Cas to keep his eyes down to learn his place, and so he did.   
But now and then when Dean came near him he felt him flinching. It hurt to see him like that, scared and scarred. It felt so wrong.

The demon dragged Dean’s body out almost every night, simply enjoying being able to sit in some shitty bar downing one drink after another. Whenever Sam called he cheered about how well everything was going, asked him if he was alright to not seem suspicious. That hurt, too. When even Sam didn't get a clue he was truly fucked.

Dean never stopped struggling, and the demon took advantage of every chance to somewhat justifiably “re-teach” Castiel. 

One time it would be for Cas leaving the room to get something out of the drinks dispenser without permission, another time for fucking up the laundry.  
The third time he did it he used Dean’s belt, whipping Cas hard enough to leave bleeding welts on his back.  
Dean heard and saw and felt a lot of awful things back then in hell. But he wasn’t sure that, even if he managed to get rid of the demon, he would ever get rid of the sound of Cas’ screams and the sight of him shuddering violently, his face smeared thick with tears and driveling, in an agonized haze that day.

After two weeks, Dean thought Cas must be completely oblivious, all doubt punched out of him.  
But then there was this one day when Dean was reminded of Cas neither being dumb nor inattentive. Neither Dean nor the demon noticed it at first and he could only just hide his surprise.  
In the end, it was but a simple little question and still so illuminating.

Cas didn’t look him in the eyes as he had been told to, hadn't done it since. He didn’t even raise his head, sitting on the edge of one of the beds. “Dean?”

Dean's sigh sounded annoyed and so did his halfhearted and slightly aggressive “What?” as a reply.

After a short moment Cas asked, almost demanding, his voice more firm than Dean ever heard it for the last two weeks, “When’s the last time you called Sam?”

And that was it.

Even the tiny halt before Dean‘s answer was enough for him.  
Cas' eyes shot up at his, his look piercing like storm and wrath and fire again, and for the first time in a long time he felt like Cas looked at **him** , not the demon.  
He got up with resolve, his back straight and there was no trace left of the scared, beaten man that Dean feared Cas had become. The exorcism poured fluidly from his lips with a fierce determination, eyes steadily fixed on him.  
Dean felt the demon‘s grip on his body slip, but it wasn’t nearly enough and the speed with which he had Cas pinned to the wall was, naturally, beyond nature.

His one hand pressed on Cas‘ throat, pushing him onto the wall, the other hand covering his mouth, soft, warm lips mouthing his name against his palm and hands clutching at his wrists.

The venom of his own voice startled him as the demon hissed, only inches away from Cas’ face.  
“You wanna know the only reason I kept you disgusting, useless little whore alive?”, he spat, and Dean felt the demon’s own pleasure at Castiel’s frantic sputtering.  
“I’ll tell you why. It’s all because poor Dean in here _likes_ you. You’ve got no Idea how much it hurt him.”

Cas thrashed and struggled, his eyes filled with hate and his still badly bruised face distorted with rage.  
The demon continued on, heedless of the angel’s fighting.

“Every time I get him to hit you, _every god damn time_ , it’s like he’s hitting himself double. So damn easy. I had so many creative tortures prepared before all of this, but by far the most effective one was you, champ. You should hear the way he’s screamed and begged, Castiel, it’s surely a thing to behold. Definitely a keeper.” 

Cas' eyes widened with panic, struggling to push Deans arms away when his hand on Cas throat kept squeezing tight, starting to choke him. 

“Don't worry, kiddo, Imma let you live. It's way too much fun to end it just now.”

Dean felt his muscles contorting his lips into a sneer and the pressure of his hand against Cas' neck increasing, his human heart desperately trying to pump blood through his jugular to his brain, but not succeeding, and his adams apple working frantically under Deans palm.  
He watched as Castiel’s glare vanished, his eyes growing hazy and his eyelids fluttered weakly against Dean’s hand. The desperate scrabbling of his arms slipped to a minute twitch at his sides, and Dean smiled as the angel slipped gradually into unconsciousness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for reading!  
> There's a chapter two planned for this and maybe even a sequel.... we'll see =)
> 
> All special thanks to my awesome beta yourguardianangel!


	2. Spellwords

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It took him almost a week and three calls to notice that _something_ must be wrong.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to all the readers and especially for the nice comments you wrote!  
> I hope I didn't let you wait too long for the next chapter.  
> Aaaand there's a little change of plans: I decided to do it properly and write four chapters total. So two more to go.

Even Sam didn’t notice it right away.  
On the other hand was he busy enough dealing with his own problems at the time.

After driving from the little chapel back to the bunker, with Crowley securely stowed away in the trunk, the two of them started a few unsuccessful attempts to convince the demon to spill all the names and information they wanted.

Sam felt exhausted at best, his arm was throbbing and swelling where the needle pricked his skin over again, the deep cut in his palm stung - at least it didn’t glow and prickle alarmingly anymore - and his headache didn’t do anything good either.

So they left Crowley there, in their dungeon, as you let meat to hang. Just like that.

At the time Dean finally found Cas by pure chance on a med run to the neighboring city ‘cause the local drugstore was closed, they had actually almost forgotten their prisoner. After all, the guy couldn’t run or just disappear tied up as he was.  
They had time and they could make good use of it.

Unsurprisingly, Kevin took off after they confessed to him they had called off closing the gates of hell.   
Sam could understand why. Finding out that your mother and girlfriend died for nothing was a sensation that he sure could relate to.  
He left the tablets behind for them. It was a rather pointless gesture, though, since they couldn’t do anything with the tablets themselves, and chasing Kevin when he didn’t want to be found was an exercise in futility.  
He couldn’t blame him. Everybody he loved was dead and his life had turned into a nightmare with no end in sight.  
They just hoped he would show up again sometime soon.

When Sam finally suggested Dean should maybe go on an ordinary hunt for Cas’ benefit, claiming that it could help the now-human angel to get accustomed to his new condition, it wasn’t quite for selfless reasons.  
It was nice to be cared for by his big brother, and he enjoyed the progress they made in fixing up their relationship, but after a while Dean started to annoy him with his overprotective behaviour.

Sam still felt like shit, but he sure could handle the basics on his own, and he enjoyed the silence and privateness Cas and Dean‘s absence left him with.  
He felt like he was slowly getting better, but the gap in his palm never really seemed to heal at all. It was almost like a badge, representing his unaccomplished task, always calling for Sam to fulfill it’s purpose.

He tried interrogating Crowley once more on his own, but again to no avail. After that he just ignored the occasional whining and swearing out of the dungeon with ease, muffled by the thick walls and doors as it was, and hoped the loneliness would be torture enough to get him to talk.

The first few times Dean called, Sam was oblivious.  
Everything felt fine and sounded so normal. Dean asked about how he was doing, they had little chats and the hunt seemed to go well. And that was it. Ordinary and unsuspicious.

It took him almost a week and three calls to notice that _something_ must be wrong. It wasn’t like Dean had said something remarkable, Sam just had the faint feeling something was kinda off. Never anything specific.

Maybe it was the out-of-the-ordinary steadiness of Dean’s calls, every second day at the same time in the evening, or the way he seemed to ask questions like following checkpoints on a list. Maybe that - according to Dean’s remarks - everything seemed to be working out just too well. Sam would’ve bet his left kidney on Cas and Dean having at least some social problems by then that’d work his brother up good, but there was nothing.  
All in all the general summary of Dean’s calls was ‘we are good, Cas’ good, the hunt’s going fine’.

It was their last call when Sam planned questioning Dean further that he realized it.  
‘Sammy I told you everything’s fine, trust me’, his brother declared not but slightly irritated after some of Sam’s increasingly pressing questioning.  
‘Dean, do you even listen to yourself talking? Jesus Christ.’ 

It was a small sound, but Sam’s heart was in his mouth instantly when he heard a muffled hiss from Dean through the speaker. Christo...?

‘Hey, you ok?’  
It was probably nothing. They were both demon-proofed, after all.  
Nethertheless Sam felt his hackles raise out of instinct.

‘Yeah, I just bumped my knee. Damn chair’, Dean muttered grumpily.   
‘So, how’s your hand?’

It was more than a bit paranoid, but after two other seemingly casually spoken spellwords that were every time accompanied by light grunting noises or hisses on the end of the line, Sam started playing a recorded exorcism in the back.  
When Dean would’ve asked about it he could just told him he was checking on their equipment.

It took him 5 minutes to drop the phone after the line cut off suddenly.

 _If_ Dean was possessed, and that was a big if, the demon would probably assume now that Sam noticed and it would move on not to be found and Sam knew he must absolutely prevent that - and if he wasn’t it wouldn’t hurt to pay the two of them an unannounced visit.

It wasn’t exactly easy to call back and play dumb and Sam hoped his acting was convincing enough when he asked, ‘Hey, did you drop the phone dumbass?’, and initiated a short conversation to give the impression he didn’t suspect anything, but it seemed to work.

When the call was over he started packing.

More than one time Sam felt tempted to call it off, shove his stuff back and call again to clarify everything. His mind was tugged back and forth between the determined conviction of Dean being possessed, however that could have happened, and the need to believe in the contrary.  
It was probably the well known routine of packing his stuff and thinking about his strategy that he was driven by at the end.

After he searched for more than half an hour for a fitting car to swipe, it took him a ten hour drive to the west before he reached the city limit and soon after, the shithole of a motel his brother and friend had shacked up in two weeks ago.  
Right at the beginning of the drive he’d tried to reach Cas separately on his cellphone, but to no avail. He tried it again every hour or so throughout the whole trip.  
If Dean actually _was_ possessed, then maybe he was already dead anyway. Sam tried not to think about it too much.

However the whole thing just wouldn’t make any sense to him, a demon making calls acting as Dean to fool him.

He parked a block down the road, just to be on the safe side. His head was pounding with exhaustion, and he felt shaky and disoriented when he swung himself out of the car. Sam took off towards the motel, armed with a flask of holy water and a pack of salt, just in case. Dean had taken the knife with him.

He knew the motel; Dean had messaged him right after they arrived and the Impala in the parking lot was a clear sign, but he wasn’t sure about the room.  
It was one of those single-level, shady places, the sort that had been the background radiation of their childhood.  
The guests were usually in for only one night, passing through, and no one ever cared a lot about anything happening around them.

He passed the several doors and windows, his head pounding in protest. He almost thought he’d found the right room once and braced himself for a fight. But, peeking through the lace-curtained window, he realized that it was just a random guy shouting and his definitely not-girlfriend throwing stuff around in anger.

He probably would’ve missed the room with the muffled, faint voice if it wasn’t for some little scraps that cut through and made his blood run faster as he approached the door.

‘...too much fun to end it just now’, the voice sounded gravelly and intimidating, and it would have almost sounded like Dean if not for the cold, hard edge to the words.  
He could hear dull, erratic thumping and muted choking sounds and then a final, louder thud.

He felt a rush of adrenaline and pushed the door open with a forceful pull. If he was wrong then there’d still be enough time to clarify it later, but according to his gut feeling and all his experiences this didn’t sound good at all.

It’s not as if Sam hadn‘t prepared himself for it, as terrifying as the thought was, but seeing a black-eyed Dean look around at him with a fading sneer, quickly replaced by a fierce snarl, still shocked him frozen.  
He could only take a short glance around to see Cas sunken down on the wall between the two beds - his body limp except for the occasional spasmodic cough - before he spilled the contents of his flask over Dean as the demon leapt at him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As usual, a lot of credit goes to yourguardianangel, my awesome beta who proofread even with a bad cold while writing her exams!


	3. Deliverance

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I apologize for taking this damn long with this chapter.  
> It will be the last one, after that there's only a rather short epilogue about to come, but nothing including the boys.  
> So I hope this finale will satisfy you!  
> Thank you all for sticking to my little experiment in writing and special thanks to my beta theguardianangel! Without you I wouldn't have come anywhere that far!

He got along on the streets on his own. Not very well, really, but well enough.

He had been cast down, left human and alone on earth to witness the fall of his brothers and sisters plummeting to the ground like burning meteors in thousands. As beautiful as the sight was to the human eye, it was unbearable for Castiel to watch the suffering of his siblings, being responsible himself and not able to do anything about it.  
He stood there, still facing the heavens long after the nightsky turned dark again, empty of all except for the stars high up above. They suddenly seemed petty.

After two whole days stumbling around in the forest, Cas finally found a road that led him to a small city.  
During his time in the woods, he quickly came to understand what it meant to be hungry, thirsty and mortally drained - drinking stale, muddy water out of foul-smelling puddles and walking most of the time to the point of exhaustion, his feet starting to blister.  
His coat was ragged when he overlooked the crest of a small slope, around noon of day two. He never expected prickly shrubs to feel this uncomfortable before tumbling down a mound through a bunch of them. On top of it all, berries and other nourishments that didn’t have to be hunted, killed and cooked first weren’t as easy to encounter as the few TV shows and movies he had seen had made him think.

Later, in the city, he managed to find in trashcans a sufficient amount of edible things so as not to starve, and the clothing he stole in a laundry he passed by wasn’t perfect but, contrary to his own now dirt coated and ripped ones, they were dry, free of mud and sufficient for the just-slightly-chilly weather.  
He was lucky.

Sleeping was still hard, though.  
Usually the places he came to rest at were just too dank and uncomfortable. But park benches, dry pipes and house entrances, he decided, were still better than wet leafed forest ground.  
One thing stayed the same though, whether he was in the forest or in the city: you just couldn’t have a good rest completely vulnerable outdoors, where you had to be on the alert 24/7.  
Every little sound, every rustling of leaves or the noise of footsteps, could present a potential danger.

Castiel had no luck at all with convincing strangers to let him make a phone call, for his own cell had broken after the first - literal - rainshower early on day one.  
9 Maybe the townspeople thought he’d steal it the moment he got his hands on it, or maybe they just found him too dirty to let him so much as touch any of their property.  
He saw himself in the shop windows he walked past every day, his scruff, the mud on his skin, clothes and hair.

Just when he started to lose track of the days, staring at his reflection in the passing glass, he heard the familiar, deep roaring sound of an old engine somewhere behind him. He watched his own eyes widening to the size of saucers.

Cas knew the sound like the back of his hand, couldn't ever have confused it, and Cas was stunned speechless when he spun around to find Dean rushing towards him, calling his name and halting close in front of him. He was obviously deliberating between pulling him in for a tight hug or a relieved, brotherly clap on the shoulder.  
They ended up somewhere in between.

Dean took him to the bunker, showed him around and even assigned him to his own room. It was the complete opposite of the life he’d gotten a glimpse of in the last few weeks and Cas finally felt at ease.

He had hoped, and deep down he had been sure, that Dean would take him in, but he had expected at least some kind of tongue-lashing after taking flight and leaving Dean alone to struggle with his almost dying brother, Crowley and the trials - and not least being responsible for all the angels now walking the earth.

But Dean went on as if nothing had happened, and so did Cas.

Being human didn’t feel quite so bad anymore after a hot shower and a warm, homemade meal that he didn't dare try comparing to his diet on the streets. Dean's burgers smelled like melted joy and tasted even better. Cas seriously doubted he would ever eat something more delicious.  
They bought him fitting clothes, a new cellphone and even his own duffel bag. It almost felt like coming home and more than once those few days with the brothers he felt that maybe falling was the best thing that possibly could have happened. 

**This** , finally, felt like living.

When Sam suggested he and Dean should go on a mission, he looked forward to hunting as a human with Dean as his mentor. He was downright excited.  


Of course there were the physical drawbacks of the human body and a lot of the angels were probably after him; but at least none of the host could mess with his head now.  
He wasn’t a soldier anymore, only supposed to do as he was told, not to feel and make his own decisions, just a tool of heaven. He was an autonomous human being.  
Cas felt free and it was even better than he’d ever have imagined.

At least for those first few days.

Looking back he should have known. He would’ve been angry with himself for falling for the demons words, though well chosen, if he had possessed any time for it. Maybe for not listening to what his instincts screamed at him he deserved what happened after all.

But Dean certainly didn‘t.

The problem was, really, that the very point of Dean’s- no, the demon’s and his ‘discussion’ was that following his instincts had caused so much destruction in the past.

It all sounded so reasonable when put into the right words, but it still wasn’t an excuse for letting himself completely be lulled into a demons control.  
He let himself be manipulated into believing Dean would do such things, hurting him in these ways. Cas did him an unforgivable injustice. Again.

When he finally got it, his efforts to break out of this clusterfuck and save himself as well as Dean were made under the worst possible circumstances.  
He was physically weakened - his body bruised and tattered - without any weapons and no ace up his sleeve. He really should’ve thought this move through better, should’ve waited for Dean’s pub crawl to prepare a trap first instead of throwing himself head first into a dead-end situation.

All said and done, he just tried to do as best as he could, but his endeavor was already condemned to failure, long before the demon even got a hold of him and swung him into the wall, the welts and bruises on his back flaring with a a fierce pain as they were pressed onto the wallpapered concrete.

When Dean's hands tightened in an unyielding grip on his neck, it wasn’t the first time he ever passed out as a human, but it was his first time from asphyxiation.  
Feeling his lungs burn and contract, trying frantically to suck in the needed air and witnessing his own body thrashing out uncontrollably as a physical reaction when the demon started choking him was frightening.  
He wouldn’t have ever imagined this kind of overall and inescapable panic, that inevitably vaults a human into mindless auto-survival-mode.

Everything just started to fade, and he could feel his grip on counciousness slipping. All the sensations and the pain deafened. His body felt numb, his vision consumed by ever growing dark dots, inking the world black and all the noise disappeared behind a cotton cocoon, leaving behind but a muted whirring. Finally the lights went out altogether.

When he came to again, there was nothing but sounds at first. Incoherent, deafening noise like the tenor of reality was indivisibly mixed with imaginary noises. Like a crowded room, filled with multitudes of voices and a high screeching sound over-layering it all. It seemed to paralyze his mind.  
The cacophony was loud and hurt, but he just couldn’t tell _where_ it hurt. There was no room, no space, no time, no sense, no memory, no body.

Slowly he started to feel his flesh again – being limbs, bones and skin but feeling like soused in warm syrup, kind of far away and insensible. He felt convulsing motions, coughing. Something hard pressed into one side of his frame, maybe a wall, maybe something else. 

Only after his sense of balance came back and the world around him snapped into place - with up and down and left and right - and the noise died down a bit, he could tell he was lying on his side on the carpeted floor of the motel room, the fabrics acrid chemical smell pervading his senses.

The motel room.  
His memories slowly ordered themselves again, and he knew it was important that he came to completely quick.

His face throbbed in the rhythm of his heartbeat and everything just ached.  
Opening his eyes was an effort, eyelids heavy and the left one swollen badly, and for the first time in two weeks he registered the carpet’s grimy red color when he was finally able to focus somewhat. 

The noise was almost gone, the squeaking faded, but it was still loud.  
Too loud. 

Thumps and groans, the intake of breath. Fighting sounds.  
He struggled to lift up his head just in the right time to see Sam trying to fight off the demon that drove Deans body, manhandling the younger Winchester to the opposite wall just next to the unhinged door. 

For a moment Cas thought he must be hallucinating, his visual cortex messing things up or something. But his vision cleared increasingly and Sam was still there, teeth bared and barely holding up.  
He looked drained. Sam was pale, big, dark circles forming under his eyes and the bandage on his hand was soaked red. It was obvious that he couldn’t hold that fight up any longer.

Cas’ lip split open wider, warm, fresh blood pouring down his chin and into his mouth, coating his tongue with the iron-like tasting fluid as he once again formed the syllables of his enochian exorcism, relieved that his mind was clear enough by then to find the right spells and his voice not lacking the strength to raise firm above the noise filling the room, though his throat burned and felt dust-dry and swollen from it's previous treatment. 

The demon let go off Sam, whirled around and leaped at Cas once again.  
It was stopped short like running into a wall the second he heard Sams words tune in, quickly reciting latin from across, the demon stuck in the middle between the both of them.

‘No! Fucking stop this!’, it snarled through clenched teeth, shuddering on the spot, muscles strained to bursting point, ‘I waited far too long for this!’.

Exorcising without a devils trap was a high risk and the demon fought them with all the strength it had.  
They could hold it bound like that for now, but it wasn’t enough and if they’d try to make any other move it would slip.

They were stuck in a stalemate.

The question was whose stamina would last longer and Cas felt his concentration lapse slowly, his body tired and beaten up and his jaw and throat hurting worse with every syllable. If Sam’s grimace was anything to go by the previous fight didn’t leave him in the best condition either. 

They wouldn’t be able to hold up like this for much longer and all three of them knew it.

It was when the demon looked him right in the eye that the tide suddenly turned.  
Something changed. 

Deans face contorted into a mask of pain, sweat breaking on his forehead but their gazes stayed firmly fixed onto each other.  
Though his eyes were still pitch black, he could see _Dean_ , not the demon.

Cas’ felt the sudden new rush of adrenaline, his surroundings dimmed, Sams chanting became mere a background noise somewhere far away and his own mouth kept on moving but he didn’t hear the words anymore, utterly concentrated on _Dean’s_ gaze.

Dean was fighting from the inside.

It felt like a physical link, their eye contact like a tight, stable rope Dean could hopefully hold on to and Cas increased the intensity of his stare, his exorcism growing in strength and resolve. He had him, right there, and Cas was determined to not let him slip at any cost.

Suddenly everything reached a crescendo. All the tension in the room, the power of their chants and the force of Dean’s and the demon’s fight, everything seemed to discharge itself into a big, rotten-smelling cloud of black pouring from Dean’s lips in waves, oozing into the ground one heave after the other Dean choked up, his throat and torso violently convulsing and pained, strangled gagging noises escaping him with it.

Cas and Sam both kept on the exorcisms for the whole time and it was only after the last bit of thick smoke dissipated around Deans feet that his now green eyes left Cas’ ones and he sagged to the ground on his knees.

Cas felt the tension of the fight ease immediately with the adrenaline quickly leaving his body. His head throbbed badly and his body ached all over, but nothing of that mattered anymore. 

Dean was free and himself again.

When he let himself sink back flat to the floor, rolling onto his battered back, he heard Sam‘s footsteps as he approached his brother with caring, worried words.  
He sounded almost as bad as Cas felt.

Dean’s feedback was weak but reassuring and Castiel could finally let go. He let out a breath, exhausted and relieved, welcomed the impending darkness that steadily wrapped itself around him and let himself sink back into unconsciousness.

A little nap now felt like the best idea he ever had.


End file.
